National Cheese Pizza Day!

One of my fave pizzas! Some people think it's boring, but it's really not. There are a variety of different cheeses you can use as a mix or by themselves. There are so many different sauces you can have with it. Traditional tomato-based pizza sauce, Alfredo sauce, garlic-based, pesto, bbq sauce, etc. Plus, you can have different types of seasonings for it. It's pretty versatile. 

The new barbecue arrived this morning! It was ordered not too long ago at Lowe's. They had an open space for today and we took it. It wouldn't have fit in the car, the box was really heavy, and we'd have to assemble it ourselves if we hadn't asked them to do it. It was on sale, which made it roughly $100 cheaper than normal. Seems about the right time to get it. Even with the service charge of them assembling and moving it, it was still slightly cheaper than what the barbecue itself was originally. It's pretty cool looking. It can use gas or charcoal. Good if you want something quick, and good if you want something slow cooked. Best of both worlds. I think it has an added burner on the side, too. It'd be interesting if I tried to grill something on it in the future. I've never actually used a barbecue before. I've used my indoor portable grill that you put over the stove a couple of times. That's definitely not the same, though. There are a lot of interesting Pinterest barbecue recipes. I thought it was interesting that it was already assembled on the truck, and they just wheeled it over to the concrete patio in the backyard. Took them only a few minutes. They weren't very talkative, but that's ok. As long as they weren't rude. 

Got to studying more Russian on Duolingo. I decided to do something similar to what I did with learning Chinese. Every time I study, I'll use the first half of the time on reviewing stuff. Made it to level 2 for the first unit called Alphabet (doesn't actually go over the alphabet), level 1 of Basics 1, and level 1 of Phrases. The last half of the time, I'm moving on to new stuff. Currently I'm going through Basics 2. It won't be at level 1 until I get through all the sections for it first. After that, it's Phrases 2. I'm remembering a lot of the phrases. The alphabet is getting more familiar again. I mentioned that it seems mostly unique besides the Greek letters it borrowed. That's not quite correct. Some are, but a lot of it is borrowed from Roman letters. Some of them have just been flipped over. Like the backwards R (pronounced as ya) and backwards N (it's pronounced as i). Some may look the same as in English, but are pronounced differently. Like, e is actually ye. With the two dots over e, it's yo. P is actually a rolled r, and x is like a guttural ch. (Same as the sound in Hebrew and German.) There are 36 letters. Quite a bit more than English. There are sounds that we don't use. There are even 2 letters that are silent that indicate a hard or soft sound for the letters they're next to. Those ones are unique looking. I remember we spent a while on the alphabet, and probably a good chunk of that time was on figuring out how those silent letters were used and 'pronounced' with other letters. It's fascinating to me how much I remember of it. It has been a long time after all.

Read more of Choujin Gakuen or Supernatural Academy. Seemed like a fluff chapter. They thought Adam had fallen in love with the cyborg Yoshino. She's an enemy at the moment, and Oska is in love with him. She's extremely possessive of him. Depending on how tired she is, her eyes change. The most human-like eyes (like the 'angel' version of her in the pic) indicates that she's exhausted her powers and is weak. She's actually a demon. Her powers are based on her mood. Turned out Adam was doing something for the group to celebrate Christmas Eve. He put lights up on a big cherry tree near the school, made snowmen in the likeness of the group members, and gave them all presents. After finding out what he was doing, they all were very touched by it. It was rather sweet. After such an intense arc, it's probably good to have something like this. Now they're determined to make Yoshino join them. It's not really a school yet. Plus, Adam's vision of it seems more of a community center for the supernatural. The supernatural beings are shunned by society. A support system, a place to make friends, they can have sports groups, clubs, etc. Not really about learning things. Although, Hachi, the talking police dog (actually acts and stands up like a human), was learning how to draw katakana. They only have 5 or 6 members at the moment. 6 if you're counting the 'living' skull mask artifact that eats up a member's misery. That member, Sae, is in the pig outfit. Yoshino's behind Oska with her back turned. It's an interesting manga so far. The art style reminds me of other manga I've read. I like it since it's a bit of a different style than the mainstream ones. 

Finally got to looking at Alliance again. I had to change a couple of things in order to publish it to Smashwords. I'm also taking the time to edit the beginning. I've always thought the wording at the beginning was a bit awkward, but never seemed to make it flow better. I think I finally figured out how to do that for the first few pages. After the first 1/4 of it or so, it's good. Alliance 2 was even better, though. I'll continue editing it again next time. I might have to change the print version to reflect the changes. Then, I'll probably have to submit both versions again to Amazon, when I submit it to Smashwords. Then, it's onto A2's stuff. I'm wondering if I should actually read (and edit if needed) the entire series so far. It'd be interesting to read it back to back, and I might immerse myself more into it this way. If I do this, it's going to take longer to submit them to Smashwords. I guess that's ok. It'll be interesting to go over Sweet Endless Terror again, too. That one's like visiting multiple worlds. 

I finally got back to drawing. Started figuring out the best hairstyle for the Dark Healer. I'm basing it off of a list of drawn out hairstyle suggestions. I think there are 50 styles on it. I want the hairstyle to not hide his facial tattoos/paint. Mostly stay out of his eyes, too. Not too spiky, and preferably something different than what I have been doing for previous characters. I drew it out today and will probably tweak it a bit next time. Will probably start figuring out and draw those tattoos then as well. In the future, I also want to improve on my style for the other characters. I might try to start drawing full bodies at some point soon. 

Practiced my clarinet for an hour. Played the last doina in the Klezmer book, advanced Mozart pieces, and started the generalized (classical and folk tunes basically) solo book. Doinas can be difficult to play. There are 2 of them in that book. They're ad libbed and they have no tempo written down. They have suggestions for the time signatures, but it varies a lot. Even playing it as written is weird. There are a lot of fermatas, too. It's really however you make it. If I remember correctly, they didn't have either of those doinas on the CD it came with. They're the last pieces. They're also the longest ones in the book. I think I'm improving quite a bit.

For cleaning, I mainly just did the cat stuff. I'll try to do more of my bathroom tomorrow. There's a trans meeting tonight, so I'm going to try to take my walk before I eat dinner. We usually leave the house right afterwards. It won't feel the same, but at least I'll get it done.